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Weblogs by Pegah Jamshidi
Weblogs: ''' Metafilter.org was one of only a handful of collaborative/community blogs back in 200 1 , where thousands of "members" were able to post funny or interesting links to a page, and where other members could leave their own opinions about those links just as easily. Writing to the Web is easy. And there is an audience for my ideas. Those two concepts are at the core of why I think Weblogs have such huge potential in an educational setting. What exactly is a Weblog? In its most general sense, a Weblog is an easily created, easily updateable Web site that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection. The earliest blogs were literally "Web logs," or lists of sites a particular author visited on any given day that would be revised by changing the HTML code and updating the file on a server. But soon, the Internet geeks who maintained these sites developed software to automate the process and allow other people to collaborate. Happily, blogging today doesn't require any knowledge of code or FTP. It takes as much skill as sending an e-mail. But what really distinguishes a blog from your run-of-the-mill Web site is much more than process; it's what you'll find there. Weblogs are not built on static chunks of content. Instead, they are comprised of reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated every day (if not three or four times a day). Blogs engage readers with ideas and questions and links. They ask readers to think and to respond. They demand interaction. Blogs are a collaborative space, as readers become a part of the writing and learning process. Being able to connect ideas and resources via linking is one of logging’s most important strengths. In large measure, it is blogs that have opened up the Read/Write frontier for content creation to the Web, and over 1 80 million people have now taken advantage of the opportunity. Remember, two new blogs are being created every second, and that pace shows no sign of slowing down. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone who creates a blog becomes a dedicated blogger; two-thirds of all blogs go for more than two months without being updated. so many of our would-be students have embraced the concept of publishing to the Web, and it bodes well for our use of these technologies in the classroom. What's somewhat discouraging, to me at least, is that these teenagers use these sites more as social tools than learning tools, and their behavior is sometimes reckless. Blogging is a genre that engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day's events or feelings. In fact, teach a specialist Fernette and Brock Edie’s research shows that blogging in its truest form has a great deal of potentially positive impact on students. They found that blogs can: • promote critical and analytical thinking; • be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking; • promote analogical thinking; • be a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information; • combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction (EideNeurolearning Blog, 2005) WEBLOGS IN SCHOOLS Adopters of Weblogs in the classroom have already created a wide variety of ways to use them, and they have shown that blogs can enhance and deepen learning. If you're wondering just how flexible a Weblog can be as a teaching tool, see the lengthy list of uses created by Anne Davis, an elementary school teacher and Weblog advocate in Conyers, Georgia, at the end of this article. Online Filing Cabinet Giving students their own Weblogs can change much about the traditional classroom. Coupled with a classroom portal space, there's a good chance the class can go paperless as students simply post their work online for peer and teacher response. This creates a digital filing cabinet for students to archive their work and, in effect, creates a space for an online portfolio of work. This has a number of obvious advantages: First, students never misplace their work. Second, having all of their work organized in one place makes for some great opportunities for student reflection. Finally, work on a Weblog can be shared with others who might be interested or invested in the student's progress. Collaborative Space One of the biggest potentials of Weblogs is the ability to create spaces where students can collaborate with others online. Although collaborative learning has been a buzzword in American education for some time now, the Read/Write Web opens up all sorts of new possibilities for students to learn from each other or from authors or scientists and other professionals who can now work side by side in digital space even though they may be far away from one another physically. Knowledge Management and Articulation Not every use of Web logs in schools has to involve students. In fact, blogs are a great way of communicating internally as well. School committees and groups that meet on a regular basis can use a blog to archive minutes o f meetings, continue dialogues between get-togethers, share links to relevant information, and store documents and presentations for easy access later on. They are a great way to manage and communicate the knowledge that gets created. In addition, districts can use Weblogs as articulation tools to highlight and share best practices, lesson plans, and "learning objects" such as worksheets or projects. Teachers no longer have to be in the same room to discuss what is and isn't working in their classrooms. School Web Site Finally, Weblogs can be used as a building block for a school Web site. A major complaint about school Web sites is that few of them are updated on a regular basis. That's an easy fix with a Weblog site. Imagine if each department had its own blog that it could maintain as needed. Imagine if all the clubs and activities, all the sports teams, and all the student government bodies had their own sites that they could update. The overall school site would move from a static, wait-for-the-Webmaster-to update-it type site to a dynamic, every-day-there's-something-new type site. THE PEDAGOGY OF WEBLOGS So what exactly can Weblogs do to improve student learning? Why should classroom teachers consider blogs as a tool to deliver their curriculum? The Read/Write Web is still in its relative infancy, and the answers to these questions are just now beginning to be clarified. But there are some basic aspects of blogs that make them an attractive addition to the teacher's toolbox nonetheless. *First, Weblogs are truly a constructivist tool for learning. Because the content that students and teachers create is on the World Wide Web, it is content that becomes a part of the wider body of knowledge that the Internet represents. It is searchable; people can find it and use it. *Second, Weblogs truly expand the walls of the classroom. The Internet has always provided the possibility of connecting students with others outside the classroom via e-mail and chat groups. But now that collaboration can be much more accessible and much more diverse. We can create sites where classes from disparate geographies can conduct all sorts of experiments; share the results through text, picture, audio, or video; and invite expert scientists into the process to reflect on the results. *Third, blogs archive the learning that teachers and students do, facilitating all sorts of reflection and Meta cognitive analysis that was previously much more cumbersome. *Fourth, the Weblog is a democratic tool that supports different learning styles. For those students who might be more reticent in class, a blog gives them the opportunity to share in writing the ideas they may be too shy to speak. *Fifth, the use of Web logs can enhance the development of expertise in a particular subject. Students who blog in educational settings usually focus their reading and writing on one topic, which helps bring about topic specific expertise. *Finally, blogs can teach students the new illiteracies they will need to function in an ever-expanding information society. BLOGS AS RESOURCES Regardless of whether you and/or your students become bloggers, blogs have probably already become sources of information about whatever topics you might be studying. And this means that at the very least, you and your students will need to learn how to evaluate them for accuracy and trustworthiness. If anyone with an Internet connection can now get online and start blogging about any topic he or she wants, how do we know whom to believe? Getting a handle on the reliability of Web content in general and blog content specifically takes time, much more than you or your students are used to. A first step is to try to find out as much as you can about the author of the Weblog. See if there is an "About" link that will lead to a name and some background on the author. What is her profession? What is her title? Where does her authority on the topic come from? Next, you may want to find out what kind of a reputation the blogger has among his peers. One way to do this is to go to the blog tracking site Technorati.com and enter the URL of the blog into the search form. The results will feature an "Authority" rating that is based on how many other bloggers have linked to that particular Weblog. In general, I would say that any site that has a rating higher than 1 00 has earned a reputation as a good source of information by its community. But that doesn't mean that blogs with a lower rating should be discounted, just as blogs with more than 1 00 should not be automatically accepted. Technocratic is just a first step. Students should be taught to take the time to evaluate the sites that are linking to a blog as well. STANDARDS FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS SPONSORED BY NCTE AND IRA The vision guiding these standards is that all students must have the opportunities and resources to develop the language skills they need to pursue life's goals and to participate fully as informed productive members of society. Although we present these standards as a list, we want to emphasize that they are not distinct and separable; they are, in fact, interrelated and should be considered as a whole. 1. Students read a wide range of print and non print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, and classic and contemporary works. 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience. 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (such as sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics). 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (conventions, style, and vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (like spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non print texts. 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (print and non print texts, artifacts, and people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge. 9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles. 10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across the curriculum. 11. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (for example, for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information). Resource: '''Richardson W.,''' '''Weblogs Pedagogy and Practice (p 17_42), Blogs, Wikis,Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Pegah Jmshidi